Data donation for the advancement of health research

What if all the health information we generate online was available for scientists to get relevant knowledge from it? That is the starting point of DataDonors, a campaign by The Wikilife Foundation (non-profit), which is asking volunteers to donate their online data so that researchers can produce faster knowledge on health issues. In this short video, its responsible for science programs, María Binaghi, shares with us some reflections regarding the main question of this blog. This contribution was possible thanks to the kind collaboration of the OuiShare Fest Barcelona event.

« With big data and analytics people are now more able to make better decisions, informed decisions »

Every day we generate a huge amount of big data, but we need to resort to analytics to make abstract information meaningful and get valuable knowledge from it. In education, learning platforms let us easily gather an immense quantity of data regarding students’ behaviour, interactions, preferences and opinions. When properly analysed — through learning analytics — all these data might provide useful insight on how to make learning processes more adaptive, attractive and efficient.

Are these techniques allowing us to provide better support to our students? Are we taking advantage of big data and analytics to help shape the citizens of the future?